EU climate policy will have significant implications for Norwegian climate, energy, forestry, and land-use policy in the years leading up to 2030 and beyond. With increasingly strict climate targets, Norwegian policymakers will need to manage growing conflicts and trade-offs between climate, energy, and nature conservation.

The ClimaLand project examines how these trade-offs can be managed to develop more coherent climate and land-use policies. A key objective is to identify how conflicting goals and interests can be balanced across sectors and governance levels.

Key research areas:

•    Forestry: The potential for increasing the forest sink capacity in the short, medium, and long term, and how forest owners can influence this capacity.
•    Peatlands: Norway’s ban on peatland development and its implications for land use.
•    Renewable energy: The impact of renewable energy development on land use.

ClimaLand aims to generate interdisciplinary knowledge about how EU climate policy affects land use in Norway and how Norway can meet its 2030 climate targets while navigating the complex trade-offs between policy goals, governance levels, and sector interests.
One study within the project shows that Norway faces challenges in meeting its land-use targets under the EU LULUCF regulation. Although annual net carbon uptake in forests accounts for around 40 percent of emissions from all other sectors, projections show a decline in forest uptake capacity by 2030. This will lead to a shortfall that must be addressed through new measures or by using the flexible mechanisms available under the LULUCF regulation.

The study also examines the trade-offs involved in increasing net carbon uptake in forests. In the short term, this may require substantial reductions in harvesting, which would affect the forestry sector’s economic activity and reduce the availability of forest products that can substitute for less climate-friendly materials. Over the long term, forest management measures like nitrogen fertilization, better forest regeneration, and denser planting could help increase the forest sink capacity. Such measures are supported by the forestry sector but face opposition from environmental groups concerned with biodiversity conservation.

The study concludes that assessments of policy coherence depend on the time perspective adopted and how problems are framed. In the forestry sector, where trees grow slowly in a cold climate, efforts to increase growth will have minimal impact by 2030 but could be more significant by 2050. Furthermore, how policy problems, goals and measures are presented—whether as conflicting or mutually supportive—often depends on the political and economic interests of stakeholders.
 

Project period: 2023-2027